Avery Stonich

Avery Stonich is a freelance writer based in Boulder, Colorado, who has traveled to more than 40 countries in search of adventure. Visit her website at averystonich.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @averystonich.

The world is a swirling snow globe as I drive over Red Mountain Pass en route from Silverton to Telluride on day three of the Southern Colorado Powder Highway. Hands gripped to the steering wheel, I lean forward and squint, struggling to discern where the snow-coated hairpins blur to sheer drops. White-knuckled driving is a…

After hours of steep bushwhacking through spiny Calafate bushes in Chilean Patagonia, I cursed as another thorn impaled my leg. I was tired and hungry, my heavy wet feet squishing in boots that were soggy from crossing multiple bogs. My guide, Fernando, was 30 feet ahead—too far for me to follow his footsteps, which were…

Climbers Matt Segal and Will Stanhope had huddled in their tent for 40 hours in a driving rainstorm last August when they reluctantly decided to pack it in for the season. They’d been camping at the base of Snowpatch Spire in the Bugaboos in British Columbia for two months, attempting the first free ascent of the…

Shortly after the film Metanoia starts rolling, we learn the defining moment of Jeff Lowe’s life. Nine days into a solo first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland in 1991, Lowe was huddled in a grotto far from the summit, soaking wet, shivering, and hungry. As a storm rattled the angry…

In front of a standing-room only audience in Boulder, Colorado, on Tuesday, big-mountain skier Lynsey Dyer fueled ski stoke with the premiere of her all-female film Pretty Faces: The Story of a SkierGirl. The film didn’t just light a match, it burned down the house, eliciting elated cheers from women who were fired up to…

See all our Valley Uprising coverage. Sixty years of fascinating Yosemite climbing culture come to life in Valley Uprising, the latest Sender Films doc now globetrotting on the Reel Rock film tour. In this 90-minute documentary that was seven years in the making, we learn of daring dirtbags who have poured blood, sweat, adrenalin, and…

Yosemite explodes at the seams with rich climbing lore. The towering granite walls of Half Dome and El Capitan attract rock monkeys like moths to flame, and any cragsman worth his sauce knows that legends are made here. Now 60 years of Yosemite’s climbing history—and its colorful tapestry of bold dirtbags and outlaws—come to life…

Dr. Jon Kedrowski was boot-packing the final push up Mount Adams in Washington, 150 yards from the 12,276-foot summit, when his spidey sense kicked in. Danger was near. His neck hair stood on end, sending chills down his back. Thunderheads had been building all day, and now it was certain they were here to stay.…

On May 6, Ryan Waters and his partner, veteran polar explorer Eric Larsen, completed an unsupported expedition to the North Pole after walking, skiing, and swimming for 53 days and 480 nautical miles from Cape Discovery on Canada’s Ellesmere Island. This feat made Waters the first American to complete the “Adventurers Grand Slam” unsupported, which…